Not Applicable
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
The present invention relates to a computer method and system for gathering and displaying information, particularly to a method and system for gathering and displaying information over the Internet.
The Internet and the World Wide Web (the xe2x80x9cwebxe2x80x9d) in particular has experienced tremendous growth in the past several years. The web service allows a server system to send graphical web pages of information to a remote client system. Web documents are typically defined using Hyper Text Markup Language (xe2x80x9cHTMLxe2x80x9d), a computer language which provides a standard set of tags that define how a web page is to be displayed. Each web resource is uniquely identifiable by a Uniform Resource Locator (xe2x80x9cURLxe2x80x9d). To view a specific web page, a client computer system specifies the URL for that web page in a request sent to the server system. On-line tools exist which permit the creation of an informational web page or group of web pages with little or no programming know-how. The web-site created using these resources becomes instantly available and accessible world-wide using a client system.
Special purpose web-site creation tools such as those for creating catalogs exist to facilitate the collection of specific information such as orders (e.g. http://www.createastore.com). These are adequate if informational requirements fit a particular model (e.g. the purchasing model) and if data needs don""t change frequently. However, it is still very difficult to gather and display customized elements of information which do not fit a particular model. To collect such customized elements of information typically necessitates enlisting the aid of a specialist such as a programmer to create a customized database-enabled web-site or database access application.
These database access applications have recently gained popularity on the web. These systems essentially require three additional components: (1) a database for the storage and retrieval of user-entered data, (2) input pages for the collection of data to populate the database, and (3) output pages for the display of the entered data. Each component must be created and the associations between each must be maintained and kept current. Typically the components are manually created and the associations between the database, input pages and output pages are established at the time of creation of the system. Where data requirements subsequently change, however, the database and associated input and output pages which depend upon the database are manually updated. This manual revision process is not immediate and not conducive to frequent changes. Moreover, keeping database associations with the input and output pages is especially difficult where subsequent changes are made by another person since the creation of the database, input pages, and output pages may not have been standardized. This is especially problematic in situations where data requirements change quickly and/or frequently.
There are tools that can assist in this process but these typically necessitate using additional off-line development tools and thus the results again are not immediate. As well, these development tools often require specialized programming skill, additional hardware or additional software. On-line tools exist to provide discrete packages to deal with parts of the problem. For instance, form generation tools (e.g. http://www.createforms.com) may deal with the input page aspect but do not deal with the output page or database association aspects. Moreover, such a piece-meal approach does not result in an integrated and coordinated solution.
Thus the process of gathering and displaying end-user data containing customized elements of data is inconvenient and unsatisfactory. What is needed then is a system that overcomes the foregoing disadvantages.
The present invention, generally speaking, uses a computer network and a database to provide a dynamic information system in which the information content and the display of the information content is based on requirements entirely user-specified and associated with a requester identifier. Requests are received from individual users of the computer network, Requestors, to electronically gather information. Input and output specification requirements are received from the Requestor and stored in dynamic format with an associated identifier and requestor identifier. Entries from individual users, end-users, containing the information to be electronically stored are sent along with the requestor identifier and input identifier and validated using the associated specifications and if valid are automatically collected and stored in the database in searchable and retrievable form. Entries are made accessible on the computer network when valid requestor identifier and output identifier are received from an end-user along with the request. In response to end-user requests, the database is searched and entries are retrieved based on dynamic search specifications and display specifications of the associated requestor identifer and output identifier. Entries are served to end-users in a hardware-independent page description language.